The World's Biggest Space Experiment Launches Tomorrow, Ready to Find Dark Matter and Alternate Universes

The ultra-sensitive Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer will hunt for the nature of matter

POPSCI, by Rebecca Boyle, 04.28.2011

In the Cargo Bay The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer is loaded into space
shuttle Endeavour's cargo bay (Michele Famiglietti/AMS-02 Collaboration)

Friday’s space shuttle launch will be much more than the final hurrah for the shuttle Endeavour. Riding in its cargo bay is a massive and controversial physics experiment that could help answer some of the most confounding mysteries in science. With the delivery of the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer, the space shuttle’s penultimate mission could turn out to be one of its greatest achievements.

Soaking up cosmic rays from its permanent perch on the International Space Station, the AMS is designed to study the universe’s deepest secrets — what happened to all the antimatter, and what, in the name of all creation, is dark matter?

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The nature of dark materials is the great mystery of our time,” said Peter Fisher, an MIT physicist involved in the project.

The AMS traveled a long and circuitous path to reach Friday’s launch. The Department of Energy experiment, nearly two decades in the making, involves some 600 researchers at 60 institutions across 16 countries. It cost somewhere between $1.5 and $2 billion — apparently, no one has quite nailed down a price tag. It was almost canceled entirely when NASA dropped it from the launch manifest after the Columbia disaster, but scientists, most notably Nobel laureate and principal investigator Samuel Ting, convinced NASA to put it back on the schedule.

The AMS is Ting’s brainchild — some would even argue his albatross — and if it works as planned, detecting the telltale signs of dark matter, it could potentially win him another Nobel.

The AMS is kind of like an orbiting version of the particle detectors in the Large Hadron Collider. At its heart is a powerful cryogenically cooled permanent magnet that bends incoming particles, in this case from cosmic rays, beams of high-energy materials belched toward Earth from dying stars, black holes and other cosmic phenomena. The way the particles bend in the magnetic field reveals their charge.

The 7-ton AMS canister also contains trackers to measure incoming particles’ energy and velocity, which will tell physicists exactly what they’re looking at.

AMS was built at CERN and tested inside the LHC, which helped calibrate its instruments. It was already detecting cosmic particles while being prepared for launch, Ting said last fall.

The system is so sensitive that it can detect one single anti-nucleus in a sea of billions of atomic nuclei. It can measure particles with energies of 100 million TeV — to put that in perspective, the LHC, often called the world’s biggest science experiment, sends particles zooming around at a comparably trivial 7 trillion electron volts and measures their collisions.

The atmosphere strips these ultra-high-energy cosmic particles of some of their qualities, so physicists have long been angling for a space-based detector. The AMS is technically called AMS-02, because an earlier version flew on the shuttle Discovery in 1998. Incidentally, that was also the last mission to the Russian outpost Mir.

That mission, which lasted just 10 days, detected some very bizarre signatures — including a possible “strangelet,” an elementary particle made up of strange quarks as well as up and down quarks. The standard model of particles and forces says there are six flavors of quarks (the building blocks of protons and neutrons), but as far as scientists can tell, everything is made of just two — the up and down flavors. If these strangelet particles exist in any sort of abundance in the cosmos, AMS will see them.

Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer With Endeavour: The AMS canister is
prepared for loading into the cargo bay of space shuttle Endeavour.
(Michele Famiglietti/AMS-02 Collaboration)

Along with unmasking strangelets, the AMS will look for signatures of primordial antimatter, if any of it persists in the universe. This could help solve the question of why everything exists.

From a purely mathematical point of view, nothing should — antimatter and normal matter should have annihilated each other in the first moments after the Big Bang. But they didn't, and the universe was left with a preponderance of matter over antimatter, and therefore something rather than nothing. Some recent studies at ground-based particle detectors have shed some light on why this is the case, but the AMS will take better measurements. It will be able to detect anti-helium or anti-hydrogen — so far only trapped in a lab — which could be evidence for antimatter galaxies, or even parallel universes made of antimatter.

The AMS will also sniff out the weak signatures of dark matter, which is six times more abundant than the “normal” matter we can see. AMS is sensitive enough to detect new classes of weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), and signals in the background positron, anti-proton, or gamma ray flux that could show dark matter is present.

Such lofty goals are a fitting finale for the space shuttle, which helped scientists discover dark matter in the first place, through its delivery of the Hubble Space Telescope.

While all these bizarre possibilities are exciting, in an interview with BBC, Ting said he hoped the experiment would go beyond even his wildest dreams.

“To my collaborators and me, the most exciting objective of AMS is to probe the unknown, to search for phenomena that exist in Nature but yet we have not the tools or the imagination to find them,” he said.

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According to Gaia - Mother Earth - is Stephen Hawking a reincarnation of Sir Isaac Newton, confirmed in a channeling thru Pepper Lewis in the Shirley Maclaine Radio Show 2, including other subjects: BP Oil spill, Dark Matter, God/God/Local God..., ET Disclosure, 3/5/7 dimension, Money, - Global - Currency ...etc.)

'Oil spill disaster was coming, govt ignored high risks'

RT.com, Apr 22, 2011

Professor Richard Steiner, a former marine conservation specialist, told RT that experts knew that the catastrophe would happen sooner or later, as the government was not providing adequate oversight of these deep-water exploratory projects.

RT on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/RTnews

RT on Twitter: http://twitter.com/RT_com

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Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain - (Google)

Google Blog, 4/21/2011

Rodgers and Hammerstein weren’t kidding when they wrote what is now Oklahoma’s official state song. The gusts on the plains are fierce, which makes the Sooner State a great place to harness clean, renewable wind energy. Our commitment to greening our energy supply is also strong, which is why we’ve just signed a power purchase agreement (PPA) for wind energy—our second in less than a year—in Oklahoma.

The purchase is similar in size and structure to the agreement we signed last July for wind energy in Iowa, but this time we will be applying the power to our Mayes County, Okla. data center, which will be fully operational later this year. We’ve agreed to purchase all of the energy from NextEra Energy Resources’ Minco II wind facility in Oklahoma for the next 20 years, through Google Energy LLC, an entity that enables us to participate in the wholesale energy market. This 100.8 megawatt facility will be built as a direct result of our financial commitment and should be operational in late 2011.

We’ve made the commitment to be a carbon neutral company, and this purchase is part of our effort to minimize our impact on the environment. We’ve managed to reduce our energy consumption by over 50 percent by building highly energy-efficient facilities, but we know that efficiency alone isn’t enough to eliminate our carbon footprint. We’ve been exploring ways, such as this PPA, to reduce emissions further by increasing the amount of renewable energy we use to power our operations; we purchase high-quality carbon offsets for any remaining emissions.

If you’re interested in learning more about the whys and wherefores of our renewable energy purchases, we’ve just published a white paper (PDF) on the topic. Our hope is that by laying out our reasoning and methods we’ll make it easier for others in the industry to explore similar arrangements.

These purchases represent long-term, meaningful actions to reduce our carbon footprint and power our operations with clean electricity. Our infrastructure team will continue to seek similar opportunities globally as Google’s businesses continue to grow. As a company we hope that purchases like these, plus the additional $350 million we’ve invested in renewable energy projects, support the market and drive down the cost of clean energy. This will enable even more companies to invest in sustainable energy solutions.

Posted by Gary Demasi, Global Infrastructure team

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Melting ice on Canadian Arctic islands major player in sea level rise: study

English.news.cn 2011-04-21

WASHINGTON, April 20 (Xinhua) -- Melting glaciers and ice caps on Canadian Arctic islands play a much greater role in sea level rise than scientists previously thought, according to a new study led by a University of Michigan researcher.

The 550,000-square-mile Canadian Arctic Archipelago contains some 30,000 islands. Between 2004 and 2009, the region lost the equivalent of three-quarters of the water in Lake Erie, the study found. Warmer-than-usual temperatures in those years caused a rapid increase in the melting of glacier ice and snow, said Alex Gardner, a research fellow in the university who led the project. The study is published on-line Wednesday in journal Nature.

"This is a region that we previously didn't think was contributing much to sea level rise," Gardner said. "Now we realize that outside of Antarctica and Greenland, it was the largest contributor for the years 2007 through 2009. This area is highly sensitive and if temperatures continue to increase, we will see much more melting."

Ninety-nine percent of all the world's land ice is trapped in the massive ice sheets of Antarctica and Greenland. Despite their size, they currently only account for about half of the land-ice being lost to oceans. This is partly because they are cold enough that ice only melts at their edges.

The other half of the ice melt adding to sea-level rise comes from smaller mountain glaciers and ice caps such as those in the Canadian Arctic, Alaska, and Patagonia. This study underscores the importance of these many smaller, often overlooked regions, Gardner said.

During the first three years of this study, from 2004 through 2006, the region lost an average of seven cubic miles of water per year. That increased dramatically to 22 cubic miles of water -- roughly 24 trillion gallons -- per year during the latter part of the study. Over the entire six years, this added a total of one millimeter to the height of the world's oceans. While that might not sound like much, Gardner says that small amounts can make big differences.

In this study, a one-degree increase in average air temperature resulted in 15 cubic miles of additional melting.

Because the study took place over just six years, however, the results don't signify a trend.

"This is a big response to a small change in climate," Gardner said. "If the warming continues and we start to see similar responses in other glaciated regions, I would say it's worrisome, but right now we just don't know if it will continue."

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Hubble Photo: A Rose Made of Galaxies

Science News Blog, Apr 20, 2011

Photo: NASA, ESA and the Hubble Heritage Team (STScI/AURA)

The beautiful image above shows a pair of interacting galaxies called Arp 273. The image was released to celebrate the 21st anniversary of the launch of the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope. The distorted shape of the larger of the two galaxies shows signs of tidal interactions with the smaller of the two. Researchers believe the smaller galaxy has actually passed through the larger one. Arp 273 lies in the constellation Andromeda and is roughly 300 million light-years from Earth.

You can see a larger image here and you can read more about the interacting rose galaxies here.

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Wind industry sees big potential for little turbines

Deutsche Welle, 19.04.2011  

Small wind turbines hold
unrealized potential

Wind turbines are getting bigger and bolder, but bigger isn't always better. Some say turbines small enough for a backyard or rooftop offer the most unrealized potential to slash emissions, especially in remote areas.

As the roll-out of renewable energies gathers pace, large-scale wind parks are cropping up around the world.

Whereas some 30 years ago a standard wind turbine might have had the capacity to generate between 10 and 100 kilowatt hours kWh of electricity, today turbines in Europe, China, and the United States typically generate 5000 kWhs of electricity.

And designs are getting even bigger.

The EU-backed upwind project is shooting for a 20 000 kWh turbine that can supply enough power for between 15,000 to 20,000 households.

Many of these beasts are destined for offshore wind parks, where their size is less likely to impact local communities.

Yet such installations still require immense feats of engineering – especially at sea.

So some engineers are trying to solve the problem of harnessing energy sustainably by tacking in the opposite direction: They're thinking small.

Emerging markets

Large wind turbines present technological,
 political and investment challenges

The benefit of this kind of micro generation is that it can be deployed in so many places and – in certain situations – can be the cheapest energy in town.

Small turbines of around 10-100 KW can be attached to houses, schools, industrial facilities and even boats and they have enjoyed their most success to date in developing countries.

"By far the largest share of small wind power is located in China at this point," Gsänger told Deutsche Welle.

China is the world's leader when it comes to building and installing small wind turbines. So far some 1.75 million Chinese have been connected to electricity this way.

China has eight million people living without electricity, and the wind power market is rushing to fill the gap, according to Chen Dechang, a spokesperson for a Chinese wind industry association.

Some 130,000 small wind turbines were built in China last year, he said.

In remote, windy regions far from centralized power plants, small wind turbines can offer the least expensive form of power.

Indeed, the technology offers the possibility of reducing poverty without growing greenhouse gas emissions.

Some 1.5 billion humans live without electricity worldwide and many can be found in remote rural communities where access to a national grid is prohibitively expensive.

So far, China has enjoyed an edge in the manufacturing small turbines because of its combination of low manufacturing costs and relatively large share of remote customers seeking local energy solutions.

Yet China isn't the only nation to take an interest in this technology.

Offshore wind parks are particularly expensive

Interest in the West

Even in industrialized countries, where developed grid infrastructure means small wind turbines are less able to compete with their larger cousins let alone fossil fuels, rising energy costs and a push for energy independence is spurring the industry. 

The US is currently home to the largest producers of small wind turbines, and they both export their products and sell them domestically.

According to the American Wind Energy Association (AWEA), the number of installed micro wind turbines has doubled during the last three years. The organization expects they will have quadrupled by 2015.

That amount of capacity would be the equivalent of one nuclear plant's energy output.

Varying EU tariffs

Although several European countries, most notably Germany, have been pioneering feed-in tariffs to drive investment in clean energies, 'small wind' has typically been at a disadvantage compared to 'big wind' to date, and has been unable to secure its own separate tariffs.

Yet that's changing.  

The UK became one of the first major industrialized countries to promote energy from small wind turbines with a feed-in tariff last year. 

Since then, electricity from a certified facility in Great Britain has been compensated with 17 to 38 euro cents per kilowatt hour (kWh) for the electricity it feeds back into the grid with small wind power - a lucrative prospect in this windswept region of Europe.

Elsewhere the mood is changing too. An investment in a small wind turbine in Denmark can net a homeowner 28 cents per kWh.

Meanwhile, wind power associations in Spain, Portugal, Ireland and Germany are lobbying their governments to establish similar rates for feed-in tariffs. The German Wind Energy Association is hoping for 15 to 22 cents per kWh. 

'Small wind' still has to become
 more efficient in industrialised countries

Boom conditions

Experts say that once tariffs make investment in small wind power lucrative, conditions will be right for another boom in renewable energies.

Of course, challenges remain.

The industry is still small and fragmented compared to its larger cousin.

There are hundreds of manufacturers around the world and most are unable to churn out units on an industrial scale. 

Standards are also scarce, suggesting the industry will still need to go through a period of consolidation before it really begins to get noticed on the renewable energy scene.

Another problem also lies in measuring wind conditions accurately.

Because customers for small turbines cannot typically field an army of specialists to measure wind conditions, overestimation of local conditions has led to disappointment among many small wind turbine owners.

That's something national and international wind power associations say they hope to change though improved quality controls and better information for the public.

Autor: Gero Rueter (gps)

Editor: Nathan Witkop

Shepherding the wind

Google Blogger, 4/18/2011

We recently invested approximately $100 million in the Shepherds Flat Wind Farm, anticipated to be the largest wind farm in the world. Shepherds Flat is currently under construction near windy Arlington, Ore., and when completed in 2012 will produce 845 MW of energy. That’s a lot of wind—enough to power more than 235,000 homes.

This project is exciting to us not only because of its size and scale, but also because it uses advanced technology. This will be the first commercial wind farm in the U.S. to deploy, at scale, turbines that use permanent magnet generators—tech-speak for evolutionary turbine technology that will improve efficiency, reliability and grid connection capabilities. Though the technology has been installed outside the U.S., it’s an important, incremental step in lowering the cost of wind energy over the long term in the U.S.

Shepherds Flat will help Oregon continue to be one of the top wind producing states in the nation, while providing significant direct economic benefits to the state. The project will also benefit the region by helping California meet its aggressive renewable energy goals with a cost-effective and clean wind resource. The electricity produced at Shepherds Flat will be sold under long term agreements to Southern California Edison.

We look forward to joining a project with strong experienced partners such as the developer, Caithness Energy, and GE, which is an early investor in Shepherds Flat as well as the turbine manufacturer and operations and maintenance supplier. Our co-investors are Sumitomo Corporation of America, a subsidiary of Sumitomo Corporation, and Tyr Energy, a subsidiary of ITOCHU Corporation, both of which have deep experience in power projects.

This project brings our total invested in clean energy to more than $350 million, including our most recent investments in a German solar photovoltaic plant and in the BrightSource Ivanpah solar power tower—the largest solar energy project in the world. We’re excited about helping deliver clean energy to the grid and we hope this latest investment encourages other companies to think about ways they can help accelerate the deployment of more renewable energy. We remain on the lookout for more projects that make business sense and will help all of us take advantage of clean, renewable energy.

Posted by Rick Needham, Director of Green Business Operations

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Democratic Report: Hazardous Chemicals Injected Into Wells by Oil Companies

Fox News, Associated Press, April 17, 2011

WASHINGTON — Millions of gallons of potentially hazardous chemicals and known carcinogens were injected into wells by leading oil and gas service companies from 2005-2009, a report by three House Democrats said Saturday.

The report said 29 of the chemicals injected were known-or-suspected human carcinogens. They either were regulated under the Safe Drinking Water Act as risks to human health or listed as hazardous air pollutants under the Clean Air Act.

Methanol was the most widely used chemical. The substance is a hazardous air pollutant and is on the candidate list for potential regulation under the Safe Drinking Water Act.

The report was issued by Reps. Henry Waxman of California, Edward Markey of Massachusetts and Diana DeGette of Colorado.

The chemicals are injected during hydraulic fracturing, a process used in combination with horizontal drilling to allow access to natural gas reserves previously considered uneconomical.

The growing use of hydraulic fracturing has allowed natural gas production in the United States to reach levels not achieved since the early 1970s.

However, the process requires large quantities of water and fluids, injected underground at high volumes and pressure. The composition of these fluids ranges from a simple mixture of water and sand to more complex mixtures with chemical additives.

The report said that from 2005-2009, the following states had at least 100,000 gallons of hydraulic fracturing fluids containing a carcinogen: Texas, Colorado, Oklahoma, Louisiana, Wyoming, North Dakota, New Mexico, Montana and Utah.

States with 100,000 gallons or more of fluids containing a regulated chemical under the Safe Drinking Water Act were: Texas, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Mississippi and North Dakota.

The report said many chemical components were listed as "proprietary" or "trade secret."

"Hydraulic fracturing has opened access to vast domestic reserves of natural gas that could provide an important stepping stone to a clean energy future," the report said.

"Yet, questions about the safety of hydraulic fracturing persist, which are compounded by the secrecy surrounding the chemicals used in hydraulic fracturing fluids. This analysis is the most comprehensive national assessment to date of the types and volumes of chemical used in the hydraulic fracturing process."

The investigation of chemicals used in fracturing was started in the last Congress by the House Energy and Commerce Committee, which then was controlled by Democrats. The committee asked the 14 leading oil and gas service companies to disclose the types and volumes of the hydraulic fracturing products they used between 2005 and 2009 and the chemical contents of those products.

The report can be read at http://democrats.energycommerce.house.gov/

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North Queensland rocked by 5.4 earthquake, 124km southeast of Townsville

News.com.au, From: NewsCore April 16, 2011

Bar patrons reported shaking glasses and moving bottles ...
.. then went back to their beers.

• Struck 124km southeast of Townsville
• Similar quakes rocks Christchurch
• No damage, tsunami

NORTH Queensland has been rocked by a 5.4 magnitude earthquake, with reports from across the region of buildings "shuddering''.

New Zealand city Christchurch was hit with an aftershock of the same magnitude just 18 minutes later.

The Queensland quake struck at 3.31pm local time, according to a preliminary report by the United States Geological Survey (USGS).

The USGS said it hit about 124km southeast of Townsville and 991km northwest of Brisbane.

The quake's epicenter was at a depth of 10km near Bowen and Ayr.

The quake is one of the largest to occur in Queensland in many years, The Sunday Mail reported.

The USGS measured it as a 5.2 magnitude quake, but Geoscience Australia recorded it at 5.4.

There was no tsunami warning issued and there were no reports of damage.

Townsville councillor Natalie Marr told how her windows rattled and her young daughter leapt into her arms during the quake.

"It scared my daughter enough she jumped on the couch with me and my windows were rattling,'' Ms Marr told AAP.

"I haven't heard of any damage at the moment.

"We usually get SMS warnings if there is more danger and to stay inside and that hasn't happened.''

Ms Marr said she had been listening to the local radio for updates and had heard people as far south as Bowen calling the station saying they felt the quake.

"It's hard to say how long it lasted, but it was probably about 10 to 20 seconds I think,'' Ms Marr said.

"I heard a guy on the radio say he timed it and it lasted 40 seconds, but it's hard to tell."

Townsville's Seaview Hotel manager Aaron Tyack said about 50 patrons witnessed tables shaking and water bottles on the bar moving.

He said the quake lasted five or 10 seconds, but no one felt any fear of danger.

The Christchurch quake hit at 5:49pm local time and follows the magnitude 6.3 earthquake that hit on February 22, causing widespread damage and a death toll eventually expected to top 180.

The quake's epicenter was 16km east-southeast of the city at a depth of 9.2km, according to the USGS.

Power was knocked out in some parts of the city, which has been experiencing constant aftershocks since a 7.1 quake in September, 2010.